


Baser Instinct

by Defenestratio



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Blind Character, F/M, Profane As Fuck Alana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 15:32:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1715675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defenestratio/pseuds/Defenestratio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had never intended her blindness. He wanted her unharmed, truly, the one bright thing in his world, and now she has only memory of the sun. Hannibal Lecter plays Alana Bloom a visit and discovers their terms have changed very much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baser Instinct

**Author's Note:**

> There's a terrific meta going around about Alana possibly coming away from her injuries in the finale blind, so I decided I would go with writing a miserable piece around it, of course.

The sound of him was never a sound before, she recognizes, but there were many sounds that have suddenly just _become._ There is still sound, after all, and the core of her—of music and conversation—is still and ever present. But now his feet have sound in all the sound they previously did not have, and that is what identifies them. 

“I have an obligation as a government official to report your presence.”

She can already hear Applesauce whining and panting, nudging her legs softly. Applesauce who never liked him. Applesauce, how she should’ve listened. She bends in the chair, burrows her fingers in soft fur, and the dog calms.

“I have an obligation as myself to make my presence apparent.”

“You weren’t going to,” she says. Her spine is steel, her words as cold, “You were going to try to move around me. You were going to treat me like a display item in a glass case and then steal out of here without saying a word. Oh, Dr. Lecter, I know you so much better than to assume you would think of any human being as more than window dressing.”

He’s looking at her. If she can pinpoint where he’s standing, it isn’t far. He smells as he always has—of something earthen, very masculine, cologne that speaks of driftwood and a lightning strike. She could probably touch him if she reached. She wants to reach. She digs her fingers into Applesauce’s fur a little harder, and the dog stands, whimpering still to hesitantly slink forward in her stead.

“You wound me.” He says, and his voice is barely a whisper. There’s something she can imagine to it—something like real hurt? She doesn’t care much.

“That’s a particularly selfish choice of words. Come a little closer. I can literalize the interpretation.”

There’s a smile in his tone when he speaks, but judging by how the words come out she can hear where the corners of his mouth upturn like troops infringing enemy territory, like it’s unwelcome and sad, “I never meant this for you. You must know.”

“Pity doesn’t suit you. –I mustn’t know anything, Dr. Lecter, I don’t know what to think anymore. Not even a little.” It’s now that her voice is betraying her. It’s a very thin string plucked sharply with the edge of a nail and she rests her feet flat on the floor, sliding them from where they are beneath her. Alana has accustomed to blindness, has reached the point where when Jack or Will fuss she becomes involuntarily _angry._ The only one who does not fuss is Freddie, and that is because it is not in Freddie’s nature _to fuss._ “You didn’t come here to put me down, did you?”

Put her down. Her eyes are fixed at a nearby point where he is, their brilliant blue, uselessly attuned to instinctively flicking to his movements. Her hands brace at the arms of the chair. Applesauce is coiled around her feet now, a mass of fluff.

“I took from you all the world’s beauty. To destroy you, I would take all the beauty from the world.”

“It’s sad. That you think things are beautiful because you can see them. That’s sad and dirty and shallow and very uncharacteristically masculine of you, Dr. Lecter. If you came here to treat me like a zoo animal don’t do it under a pretense. Don’t insult me by talking like you’re someone else just because I can’t look at you. You don’t get to remake yourself to create the distance.” There is utter quiet, then, and she can hear him breathe. Slightly sped up, in fact, the breaths of someone angry to be caught in a lie. But she can feel that there are small, warm droplets rolling down her cheeks, and she’s aware that her jaw is clenched tight, “You hate being accused of acting shitty, even when it’s plainly how you’ve acted. I never saw it before. I always took you for a contrary, bratty little prince, and it hurts me to know that now I have to spend every day knowing the last way I ever saw you was _dangerous.”_

“Never toward you—“ he’s almost begging now.

 _“You fucking blinded me, Hannibal.”_ It isn’t a scream but it’s verged on it, perched, it’s wanting for the rage of the thing. But all she’s coming up with is the hissing silence of something that could easily turn into hatred. “It might not have been you, but you, you can do the one thing you have always done and that is take responsibility for your actions when you know you’ve been truly heinous toward someone _you love.”_

“I never wanted this.” He feels like this is a nightmare and he must wake up. She recoils back when he rests his fingers on her knuckles, pressing against the back of the chair, and like she knows he will he obediently falls back a step, his head dipped low in half a bow like he’s offended her and he is sorry.

“It would’ve been figuratively otherwise, and figuratively is _worse. —_ You’re getting dangerously close to that time when I have no choice but to inform the authorities.” Those sightless eyes fix on him and he wonders what he looks like to her. She has seen him, of course, she knows him so well, and he wonders if her image is his bull-rushing physique in those last moments, in the death of her vision. He wonders if he stands here before her in that imagined white shirt, if she sees him still with the smear of blood across his chest like the  Légion d'honneur worn by a Duke.

He hopes she still imagines him the way he looked the first time he ever heard her laugh, back when he was Dr. Lecter at Johns Hopkins. Back when his eyes caught the light in a scarlet she could say was more like ladybugs than blood. Back when he had that _ludicrous_ ponytail she couldn’t stand. He hopes she keeps those images. Maybe, he’s just selfish to remain something even privately or shamefully loved.

Her head tilts back and, like it matters, even, her eyes flutter closed (they do just that, flutter, he even sees the long lines of her lashes as they brush aside the tears on her cheeks). She inhales, her chest heaves, and she exhales, and there’s a scent that lingers in her nostrils, “There’s a perfume on you that belongs to another woman. I’ve overestimated your intellect, Dr. Lecter, I’m learning and living proof that apparently your strategy is manipulating women with your dick.”

There’s a flash of genuine amusement across his lips. Her fire, her vulgarity, he did always love the way she saw no need to ever curb her tongue. No one would so openly challenge him and he does have a meter, this man of flexible means, this hypocrite, he does see her as his equal so he only delights in it. 

“I have a protégé who happens to be a woman, but I have not—slept with her. I have never been unfaithful to you.” And now his breath is so close it’s in her mouth, and there, with her eyes closed that way, he is bending to steal a kiss as she dozes in her favorite chair. Her movements arch up and she whispers against the promise of his lips. He is poised, his arms carefully stretched across her, and his mouth is the one part he is touching any of her with. He won’t dare besmirch her with his fingertips.

“Get the fuck out.” She snarls in a painful growl. Every nerve jolts, and somewhere his eyes are ladybug red, but here they spoil to the stain of Crawford’s blood rotting in the fabric of his white shirt.

She hears him when he leaves, but she knows this time it isn’t just because of her ears.


End file.
